When Music and Science Converge

When music and by Judy Hill science converge f I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician,” said Albert Einstein, who nicknamed his violin Lina and was fa- mously ardent about Mozart and Bach. “I often think in music,” he added. “I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.” The Nobelist was hardly alone among his fellow scientists. Music and science, it seems, have gone hand in hand through the ages: physicist Richard Feynman was an avid bongo player; Russian chemist Alexander Borodin composed Romantic-period music; and Queen’s guitarist, Brian May, is a respected astrophysicist. Here at Caltech, a sizable number of scientists also wield a bow, pluck a string, or tickle the ivo- ries. Two in particular have forged powerful links between their research and their musicianship. 30 Summer 2019 Caltech magazine magazine.caltech.edu 31 Nine hypothesis. That’s why you can go out and make art or planetary scientist Konstantin Batygin (MS ’10, Batygin met Marturet when both were selected for the out of it.” PhD ’12), the parallels between music and science Genius: 100 Visions project, which collected the insights are clear. “If you look at a scientific idea, it’s just a and visions of top minds around the world in celebration To get ready for Miami, Batygin practiced like never riff,” he says. “It’s a melody, but it’s not attached to of the 100th anniversary of Einstein’s general theory of before, since, he says. “It turns out being pretty good at Les Deutsch anything. The way that a scientific idea grows into a hy- relativity in 2015. A mutual acquaintance mentioned the rock ’n’ roll isn’t the same as playing in the symphony.” (BS ’76, MS ’77, PhD ’80) pothesis, into a theory, requires all of this additional work ninth-planet hypothesis to Marturet, and the conductor Music has always been part of Batygin’s Deputy Director, Interplanetary Network, JPL where you take an idea, you build it, and you see how it seized on the idea of writing a Planet Nine symphony as life. His father, Yuri, also a scientist, had a Instruments played/owned: Organ, trum- fits in. It’s the same with music.” an extension to Gustav Holst’s Planets suite. band, so Batygin grew up watching him pet, saxophone, clarinet, piccolo, flute, drums, Batygin has been in the spotlight in recent years for Batygin was not completely surprised that Marturet play guitar, though, as he notes, “it wasn’t violin, banjo, piano, French horn, euphonium his work with Caltech colleague Mike Brown that hy- felt compelled to write a new symphony after learning really proper to play rock music in the pothesized the existence of an as-yet-undiscovered ninth about a hypothetical ninth planet. “I think there is, Soviet Union.” When the family moved Caltech connections: I’ve played just about planet (“Planet Nine”) in the solar system. That work is among classical musicians, a thing about the planets and from Moscow to Tokyo, he attended a every instrument in the Caltech-Occidental deeply exciting to Batygin, but recently he has been just the Planets suite,” he says. “The other intriguing thing Japanese elementary school and, as he Wind Orchestra. I’ve played most of the instru- as excited about classical music. about Planet Nine is that it has this remarkable property recalls, basically pretended to play the ments also in the Jazz Band. Starting in 1974, keyboard amid a “bunch of third graders Batygin’s forte, he will quickly point out, is not classi- where people can resonate with it. It’s something that I’ve been the Caltech organist playing at every who were actual virtuosos, just perfect, on cal music. With his band Seventh Season, he plays hard astounded me when we first wrote the original paper. It commencement. every instrument.” rock, a genre he has passionately espoused since around didn’t just get media attention; it seemed to me that people I’ve also done a lot of composing for Caltech the age of 11. Nevertheless, earlier this spring he traveled were truly captivated. I think it’s at the right intersection He started to learn guitar as a preteen, over the years. For our 100th anniversary, to Florida to play guitar on a piece of music written by of mysterious and tangible. It combines those two curiosi- because, he explains, “that’s the time when I composed a Centennial Suite, which is a Miami Symphony Orchestra conductor Eduardo Marturet ties of the human condition in such a nice way, the notion your brain starts to have weird hormones, four-movement suite for band that was per- and inspired by Planet Nine. that there’s something there in the solar system, in our and you need to express yourself through formed at Bandorama. In 2017, I did a 20-minute home solar system, that has yet to be discovered. I think A minor, primarily.” That was also when he piece for Concert Band in honor of the 40th because of that, there’s a real magnetism to the Planet discovered Metallica and became fascinat- anniversary of Voyager. ed with heavy metal, both for its technical Konstantin Batygin and Lucy Jones share notes in Beckman Auditorium. challenges and the way it pushed the art Outside of Caltech: I also play in a professional Dixieland band form to the next level. For a while, he says, called the Night Blooming Jazzmen. I wish I’d thought of that name. he had no other interests than to start the next Metallica. Musical background: I started organ lessons when I was 11. My On the off chance that plan A did not work out, and father was a chief scientist at North American Aviation at the time and with a natural affinity for physics, he enrolled at UC Santa they were looking for something to apply their electronics toward in Cruz. “I ended up absolutely falling in love with what I the commercial market. He proposed they work on a digital electronic do now,” he says. He attributes that to his undergraduate organ, something that didn’t exist then. In around 1970, the product was adviser, Greg Loughlin, who also, as it happened, played released by Allen Organ Company. in a band. “I ended up doing cool research and published a paper with Greg in my final year of undergrad,” Batygin Solos vs. teamwork: As an organist, typically you play alone and says. Graduate school at Caltech (he received his PhD you don’t get that experience of playing with a group, so playing in the in planetary science, working with Dave Stevenson and bands is important to me. The same is true in doing research. There are Mike Brown) followed, and he never looked back. He also things that you do by yourself, and there are things that you do as part kept playing. of a team. The two fields are very analogous. “Music isn’t just a way to relax, it’s a way to keep the imagination part of your brain going in ways that are very correlated with science,” says Batygin. “Of course, they’re distinct, but the process through which you come up with an idea and then let it take hold and develop in your mind is exactly the same. I take the same approach to writing scientific papers as I do to writing music.” Seventh Season plays locally at Pasadena’s Old Towne Pub. “The spirit of rock ’n’ roll is very much alive in the Old Towne. The symphony is never going to perform in the Old Towne, but I had this remarkable opportunity to bridge the divide. Who would ever have thought that being a professor at Caltech would lead me to playing in the symphony?” 32 Summer 2019 Caltech magazine magazine.caltech.edu 33 chromatic; it wasn’t music, just random notes.” She was Julia Greer s one of the world’s most influential seismologists, interested in creating something more musical. Her first Professor of Materials Science, Mechanics and Medical Engineering Lucy Jones is a familiar face to residents of the efforts ended up in the trash can, but the idea lingered, and when she retired from the USGS in 2016 she picked Southland. But while her post-quake TV appear- Instrument: Piano ances have been seen around the world, she is less it up again, dividing her time between composing and writing her most recent book, The Big Ones: How Natural well known as a dedicated player of the viola da gamba, a Caltech group: A trio with cellist Monica Kohler and violinist Tony Disasters Have Shaped Us. stringed instrument similar to the cello. Kukavica (Class of ’21). Jones had studied a 17th-century musical genre called Recently, Jones, who was a seismol- In Nomine, in which one instrument plays Why music is still part of her life: I’ve been playing since I was “As we go through the really ogist with the United States Geological a simple theme, or base song (from the 5 or 6. I grew up in Moscow. Every little Russian girl has to take piano Survey (USGS) for 33 years and is now Latin phrase cantus firmus), and other lessons. I just never quit. As amateurs, we have the best of both worlds. accelerated times of rising a visiting associate at Caltech, com- instruments play more complex lines in Because we’ve built the tool set to get to the bined her scientific knowledge with counterpoint.

Load more